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Summer Visit - 2013 - SHIPs

The summer visit to Caltech is 3-4 days long and is the only time during the year of work when all the participants on the team come together in person to work intensively on the data. Generally, each educator may bring up to two students to the summer visit that are paid for by NITARP, and they may raise funds to bring two more. The teams work at Caltech; the summer visit typically includes a half-day tour of JPL, which is a favorite site for group photos. Reload to see a different set of quotes.

The SHIPs team came to visit in June 2013. The core team educators attended, plus 9 students.

Quotes

  • [student:] The best thing about the trip was meeting all of the other students and teachers who were working on the same research as us. It was nice to be able to come together and compare our research and learn together as a group.
  • I was also surprised not to be more tired. Don't get me wrong, I certainly took a five hour nap on Saturday after coming home on the red-eye from LA, but overall the week left me invigorated rather than exhausted.
  • [student:] The most interesting thing I did saw and learned during the trip to Caltech was the process of actual research. In school all projects and work has already been done. However, while doing research at Caltech, we were researching new information that hasn't been touched on before. The researchers and presenters provided great information on the research at hand and also on how to conduct the real scientific research.
  • I was surprised with the speed with which my students increased their proficiency with the tools we are using -- especially Python programming! My students acted very independently and hardly ever needed me to suggest something for them to do next; many times they were already anticipating the next tasks and trying to figure out how to do it!
  • [student:] But, I didn't think programming would be such a big part of scientific research, simply because the two are never really associated with one another in science classes at school, so I was happy to discover its importance in the field.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2013 - SHIPs